Saturday, December 12, 2015

The Mosque of Notre Dame

According to the Wikipedia article, this dystopian novel (The Notre Dame de Paris Mosque), was written by Russian author Elena Chudinova in 2005:

The novel became a bestseller in Russia, garnered widespread publicity, and was awarded the Bastkon literary prize for 2005. Later, the book was translated into several European languages: French, Serbian, Bulgarian, Turkish, English, and Norwegian.

After the French translation was completed, for a long time, a publisher in France could not be found. According to the book's French publisher Jean Robin, potential publishers ignored the book because of its politically-incorrect theme.

The author and the translator were planning to upload the text of the novel for free distribution on the Internet, but in 2009, a publisher was found - the French publishing house Tatamis, which released the novel on April 15, 2009.

In Turkey, the novel was released in a pirated, unauthorized translation. Authorized translations of the novel were published in Serbia (2006), Poland (2012), and Bulgaria (2013).